phobiainfo

There exist fears that evoke memories which produce pleasant sensations. For example, fear of darkness may evoke memories of the kind “... when I was a little child and felt fear of darkness, my mother stayed behind me...”  which make a man dig into the atmosphere of his childhood. 

Fear of darkness is a trigger mechanism of pleasant memories that come by need (especially often this occurs when the man consciously for a particular reason does not allow himself dig into childhood but needs it unconsciously).

Or vise versa, memories from childhood are not much pleasant but as a result appears a kind of sensation of liberty resonating with next thought “Here is a transformer house and I was afraid to approach it when I was three years old. I had a quite difficult childhood, everyone educated me and tried to suppress me, but now...  I am happy that I grew up and now I may not comply to pressure, even if the fear of transformer houses still remain... Let it be, the fear remain but more important is that pressure does not remain in my life.”

It is clear that similar associative chain may quickly float in mind and you do not fix similar intermediate stages and even do not realize them, but you just feel extreme elements of the phrase “fear of transformer house or darkness is a pleasant feeling for the soul.” Pleasantness itself may be unrealized – there is a new fear which does not disturb, and there is no need to get rid of it, it is always presented in everyday life, let it be...

Such fears exist in life of any person. At any rate, each person may feel need for those fears. When fears get more frank forms and start not to help but to disturb, and start control man's life, than we can talk about phobias because hese are cases when fears are called phobias.

Phobia is an intensive and insuperable fear which a man experiences and understands its meaninglessness but cannot fight it alone. Strange to say, many fears in men's life are not phobias in fact. In reality, phobia is a kind of neurosis. Therefore, each fear cannot be called phobia. Even when you fear things or phenomenon that are not threatening you, it may be not a phobia in full sense of this word.

For instance, fear of darkness is not necessarily a phobia! Fear of anything else is not necessarily a phobia unless it starts prevail over your whole life and influences all your decisions.

For example, in case of transformer house phobia, you may never go out because you fear that everywhere you may encounter it. If you had a real darkness phobia, you couldn't stay in any dim room, you would sleep only in a bright light and couldn't drive your car at night. Each man in his life may have episodic fears but this are not phobias.

Why do those fears appear?
In human life pleasures and displeasures try to be in a balance, therefore often occurs that the man looks for fears. A man in order to get sensations watches horror movies and sometimes finds fears in himself. It is pleasant to move from danger, but in order to do this, first of all you should be behind it and moving away would be a pleasant sensation. Therefore, often source of fears are still objects.

There exists a theory that fears do reflect something that you feared some time ago (in childhood, teenage, not necessarily you should remember about it) and now it is irrelevant for you in terms of  your personal security. It is pleasant to feel a particular memory-fear because you felt a great fear before and now you don't fear at all but it continues to rattle your nerves. Behind the object of your fear you feel agitation and not your recent helplessness. This also is subconscious pleasure of releasing.

Before you decide to change your lifestyle you should make out if the old phobia would not get into your new life. For example, if hidden cause of your fear of underground railway is discomfort at work which man experiences due to intrigues against him, then the best solution would be the work change.

In this case it would be not important that you use underground railway. If this is caused by personal problems (inability to communicate, for example) the new job near your house would not save you from phobias, and instead would appear a fear of going out. The unconscious needs a reason to save you from hateworthy work.

It is necessary to differ phobia from reasonable fear. All reasonable fears are active because people always look for getting rid of them. Phobia is a passive fear – sufferer avoids unpleasant situations but not tries to get rid of them because at the bottom of his heart he likes it.

To relieve partially from phobias you may establish some rituals, for example, notes on the door “Turn off the gas!” . If you fear to leave door of the flat opened, make it a rule to check the door after turning the key. However, problems may appear when rituals become so complicated that they begin to impede.

Let us see the story of a man. A man had at his work quite strained relationships with superiors. Each morning before going at work he played patience on computer while it gathers for three times in sequence. It is clear that he spent much time for this and as a result he began to late for work which helped to more deterioration of relations....

Remember that phobias may be treated and in some cases the sufferer himself may fight it - here is important to specify correctly what phobia to fight, otherwise new problems would appear.

Some people would say that it is better not to feel fears at all. However, it is a wrong idea because absence of fears is a sign of mental disorder

Parental phobias are based on fear of responsibility. Often parents feel a real obsessive fear about their children. Parents are afraid that something bad may happen to their kids. Thus parents begin to curtail freedom of children to prevent them from potential dangers and say it is made for the benefits of children.

In fact, phrase “don't hold with that boy” is based on parental personal fears, because parents consider  if the child all the time stays at home it would make feel themselves comfortable. Sometimes occurs that parents  unwillingly provoke in their children fear of open spaces, and as a result child doesn't want to go out and prefers to stay at home.   
Can phobia be treated? Certainly, yes. The question is how. It is impossible to treat phobia with phrase “there is no one in wardrobe”, because patient understands that nothing threatens him but anyway he keeps on fearing.

One psychologist treated a man with fear of underground railway with a specific method – doctor followed his patient at his work and back home. In presence of doctor the patient felt no fear at all, but when he was alone in underground his fear appeared again. It is necessary to act upon root causes of fear and not on its external manifestations.

In spite of external groundlessness, there exists inner causes of phobia. They are hidden in patient's subconscious mind. Therefore, most effective method of phobia treatment is classical psychoanalysis.

However, unfortunately this method is quite cheap and not anyone may afford himself it. In this case the only way for the suffering person is to change totally his lifestyle. For example, you suffer from fear of lift, so it would be better for you to find an apartment at first floor. Or if you suffer from fear of underground railway, use bus instead.

Phobias in teenagers are based on the feeling “I am the medium”. Appearing of such phobias not depends on age, however, mostly teenagers do suffer from them. Here we speak about thanatophobia (fear of death) which practically is absent in children because they do not understand life values yet; fear of spaces (claustrophobia, agoraphobia), nosophobia (fear of becoming ill).

Most common phobia among teenagers is sexophobia (heterophobia) – fear of the opposite sex. At the beginning this word denoted fear of sexual intercourse, or in other words, fear that male experiences when trying to make sex with a woman. When he remains alone with her, his hands and legs become numb and appears sweat. Later, sexophobia started to denote not only fear of intimate relations, but also spiritual ones.

People with sexophobia fear to start any relationships which last more than 3 – 5 days.  No matter how they need affection and partnership of a dear person, anyway they break long-drawn acquaintance as they fear to be connected morally with someone, they fear to depend on a particular person and to attach to him. The break may be very painful and it may worth many sleepless nights for the initiator of the break but he can do nothing about it, because fear of being connected spiritually with someone is much stronger.

Another issue are sexual problems which are not phobias but may lead to them. Fear of being a bad partner from time to time may prevent from erection appearing and maintaining it. Complexes about the own body may also destroy peaceful course of sexual life. In those cases psychological problems which require a solution do suppress sexual function and this finally may lead to phobia appearing.

Phobias in children are based on the feeling “I am a part of medium”. Certainly, such fears as fear of darkness, fairy-tales or witch in wardrobe are common children's fears.

Moreover, mother may show him the empty wardrobe with no witch in it, however, child would continue to fear and avoid to approach the wardrobe.

There exists an entire group of phobias which belongs to childish ones, so called social phobias (fear of communicating) which occur not only in childhood but in adult's life too.

Yes, children often fear to go to the kinder garden or to school, but sometimes adults fear to speech in front of audience, experience fear when they talk with superior individuals or even someone on telephone...

Some forms of social phobias may develop in family. Some fears usually remain unnoticed, for example, some people experience fear when they think about meeting with father of mother, mother-in-law or mother of the wife...

It should seem nothing out of the common, however, phobia signs are evident: anxiety, intention to avoid meetings by any means, hypertension, etc.

Each of us has its fears and phobias. Many people live their life trying to avoid objects of their fears. Some people fight their fear in childhood and transform phobias and weaknesses into accomplishments. This occurs in sport as well.

Famous English footballer Andy Gray suffered in his childhood from a rare neurological disorder – he couldn't stand green color. The reason was not his bad temper. Long contemplation of something green could result in severe headaches and aggravation of common well-being. This problem caused in Andy the development of fear of green color. Gray avoided everything what was green and couldn't normally play football on grass.

However, his father had not gave up as he wanted his son to play football. He fired from his work in city and moved in country to live there with his son. There they together lived, played and, most important,  every day they spent a lot of time outdoors among green plants. Those drastic measures which doctors could oppose, showed positive results – gradually the fear has disappeared and up to now it doesn't show itself.

Famous Ukrainian swimmer Denis Silantiev was a weak and sick boy in his childhood. So parents decided that their child needs athletic trainings to improve physical development. In connection with health condition they have chosen most virulent and traumatic but healthy sport – swimming. However, on first trainings parents discovered that their six-year child experiences fear of depths and it is quite problematic to hale him into the water.

Parents didn't intended to give up and found a small swimming pool where their child could fell himself more confident. This swimming pool was  not deep at all and water even not reached the joints, but anyway it was hard for Denis to feel himself comfortable.

It took a lot of time to get used to it. Today the famous swimmer confesses that water is not his environment and he really suffers from hydrophobia.  Silantiev – world swimming champion- each time fights his phobia when enters the water.

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There exists a significant difference between fear and phobia. When an individual experiences phobia, he understands that it is meaningless fear but with this he not keeps from experiencing it.

The probability of phobia appearing exists practically in each person, therefore phobias are a quite common phenomenon among people. There are many kinds of it. People fear spiders and snakes, heights and public transport, opened and closed spaces.... For example, phobophobia – fear of phobias.

Most common signs of phobia is regular escape from situations in which individual feels fear and experiences panic attack.

You may easily recognize phobia by the next signs:

• choking sensation, spasms in throat
• rapid heart
• sensation of weakness, consternation
• feeling that collapse is coming
• cold sweat
• strong feeling of fear and horror
• shiver in the whole body
• vomit or indigestion
• feeling like you are becoming insane

In case you experience at least four of those signs, it is likely you have phobia.

1. Fight fire with fire
The purpose of this method is to bring down sufferer face to face with his phobia in order to make him understand that his fear is not harmful. There may be used real or virtual way of treatment. Today psychotherapists often use computer games to treat claustrophobia. In this games main character has to battle on skyscrapers and in narrow street labyrinths. After just one game session the condition of sufferer improves greatly.

2. Contraposition
The purpose of this method is to learn patient to react differently on his fear. Instead of getting the jitters, patient learns to relax. For example, when there is need to withdraw attack of claustrophobia it is recommended to do next: concentrate your sight at any dot and start breathing deeply and frequently. Also you may start counting stairs of imaginary staircase. Another way to fight phobia is to imagine bright picture with which you associate positive emotions.

Physical activity also helps to fight phobias, for example, bending at the knees. Physical activity helps to burn adrenaline - a stress hormone which causes symptoms of anxiety.

3. Hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
NLP techniques are based on working with particular turns of phrases. When sufferer pronounces particular phrases, it helps him to calm down.

4. Abstractive methods
They include washings with cold water, massage of neck and hands, respiration exercises, slight wave of the hands, autotraining, etc.

5. Medications
Drugs reducing anxiety and panic (antidepressants, psychotropic medications, antipsychotic drugs) have only intermediate significance. Drastic medications should not be used. When there are no contraindications, may be used safe tranquilizing drugs.
There are known cases of automatic recovery from claustrophobia. That is the case when time is a great healer. The more older patient is, the more easier treatment will be. Therefore, often symptoms of phobias disappear with age.

In some people claustrophobia develops after a negative experience, for example, after they stuck in a lift for a long time, or if in childhood they lost parents in a crowd. Others inherit this fear by copying their parents or friends who suffer from claustrophobia. And others think the problem up. It turns out that often phobia subconsciously is beneficial to person who suffers from it.

For example, fear of closed spaces prevents a man from staying home alone and from using lifts and may be unwillingly be used by lonesome people to attract attention by relatives. As a rule, this benefit is not realized by the sufferer, but it exists.

Mental specialists say that to get rid of phobia it is necessary to realize its causes. Therefore, most effective way of treatment is classical method, also called group analysis. Unfortunately, there is no magic pill to help humans get rid of claustrophobia and other phobias.

When fear of closed spaces disturbs your life, you should consult a specialist. Psychotherapist will help to find the cause of the problem, or in other words he will find its hidden causes. Otherwise, without knowing the cause, phobia, which was treated, may get another form after some time. This will be endless circle..